Monastic Tea Garden - Have a Cup of Tea!

Previous posts in this series: Mint , Chamomile, Hyssop, Beebalm .Time is getting away...several weeks ago the last of the mint was harvested to take us through the winter months. And it is a good thing because we had our first hard frost a couple of days ago and the majority of our beautiful flowers have passed from this life...alas...

So now it is time to enjoy a warm cup of tea!

Once the herbs have been cut, dried, processed, and blended into their various teas, it is time to brew a cup! Believe it or not, there is an art to brewing a good cup of tea:

For loose-leaf teas, you need a tea strainer or some other method of straining out the leaves from the tea once they have steeped long enough.

“Long enough” depends purely on the strength of tea you desire. If you want the medicinal effects, pour boiling water over the tea and steep for at least ten minutes; the longer, the better. This is especially true for hyssop, which seems to need longer than most other herbs. When making a gallon of hyssop tea, we steep it for two hours!!!

The same rule applies here as for drying the herbs: if you can smell the tea as it is steeping, you are losing some of the oils into the air! If you can, put a cover on your tea as it steeps to prevent this.

A teaspoon of dried tea per 8 oz. cup of hot water is a good proportion.